Emmanuel Macron rejects Ursula von der Leyen’s latest EU energy project

French President Emmanuel Macron dropped a spanner in the works of EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed energy plans on Friday, September 16. One of her plans is to construct a large network of interconnecting pipelines across Europe. These would run from North to South of the bloc.

Von der Leyen believes that such pipelines, in the long term, could be capable of pumping green hydrogen. It would be generated by huge wind farms located in Portugal and Spain and subsequently pumped to Europe’s energy-hungry nations like Germany.

According to Politico, senior EU sources informed them that Macron rejected this idea. Allegedly, this is because he has his own plans to use nuclear energy for the production of hydrogen and sell it to other countries, including Germany.

Macron similarly dismissed another project earlier this month. Spain, Portugal and Germany had approached the French leader with the idea of reviving the discontinued MidCat gas pipeline. It is already partially constructed, having been started back in 2013 by François Hollande, his predecessor.

Funding was to be made available from the EU for the pipeline to be completed, eventually connecting the Iberian Peninsula with the rest of Europe, via French territory. The French President finally rejected the idea, claiming it would: “not solve the European gas problem. It is false, it is factually false. I am willing to hear my colleagues give me other facts that would convince me otherwise”, he added.

Ever since Russia’s Vladimir Putin turned off the gas supplies to Europe the EU has been desperately searching for a solution to weaning itself off this historical energy supply from Russia. Ursula von der Leyen has not yet been successful in her attempts at lowering the cost of wholesale gas supplies across the bloc.

She has turned her attention to the task of decoupling electricity and natural gas as a way of lowering escalating energy prices. EU officials are also looking at the huge profits that oil and gas companies are making, with a possible windfall tax being implemented on these profits, as reported by express.co.uk.

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